Amy Wax and John Eastman are teaming up! It’s the buddy comedy you never knew you didn’t need at all.
Wax continues her fight against the University of Pennsylvania for imposing the barest of minimum sanctions against the professor after years of embarrassing the school, baselessly denigrating minority students, and bringing white nationalists to campus. And now she has brought on Eastman — author of the memo explaining how Mike Pence could simply declare Trump as the winner of the 2020 election — to help with her state court suit and potential federal appeal.
California disbarred John Eastman earlier this year, by the way. In its decision, the California Supreme Court adopted a 2024 recommendation finding Eastman culpable on 10 disciplinary counts relating to Eastman’s efforts to overturn the election. Last week, the ACLJ — which is like the ACLU except for the kind of guys who can’t visit their kids anymore because of January 6 — filed a cert petition asking the Supreme Court to overturn California’s decision. He has unironically compared the disbarment to the persecution of Jesus, which makes sense if you read “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” as a literal call to authoritarianism.
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Undeterred by the ultimate deterrence the profession has at its disposal, Eastman’s now taking his coup curious talents to Pennsylvania to help Amy Wax. Because few lawyers understand the struggle of refusing to accept the natural professional consequences of one’s actions like John Eastman.
“I was delighted to accept Professor Wax’s request to represent her on this important appeal,” Eastman wrote in a statement. “In many ways, Penn’s efforts to cancel her are part of a broader, despicable cancel culture of which my own Cal Bar proceedings are a part.”
Well, if we’re getting technical, “cancel culture” would be disbarring you for being a Donald Trump supporter. Instead, you were disbarred because the court found you joined a conspiracy to “illegally disrupt the peaceful transfer of power to President-elect Joseph Biden, knowing that there was no good faith theory or argument to lawfully reject the electoral votes of any state or delay the January 6 electoral count.”
Tomato, To-ma-toh.
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Wax already tried to challenge her punishment in federal court as “discriminating against her as a White Jewish woman and something something First Amendment.” It did not work, but she’s hoping the Third Circuit might still bail her out on that one. And so Wax ran to state court, filing last November in the Court of Common Pleas of Montgomery County, to argue a variety of procedural deficiencies with her punishment. Complaints like the school not allowing her to confront witnesses and acting on hearsay, as though the primary evidence wasn’t things she actually said and did in public. You don’t need witnesses when the statements were streamed out on webcasts straight from the horse’s mouth.
She wrote newspaper articles about white “cultural” superiority, lied about Black law student grades on a webcast, and posted about how the country needs “fewer Asians” on a Substack. The case against her isn’t exactly a whisper campaign. She put together the highlight reel herself and then draped herself in “academic freedom,” as though blog comment boards were advancing legal scholarship. Throughout this process, Wax consistently confused the freedom afforded a scholar to pursue rigorous research into unorthodox topics with the freedom to mouth off without consequence simply because her title is “Professor.” Once the university finally disabused her of that notion, she threw a litigation tantrum.
Legally, adding Eastman is a bizarre move. “I look forward to the argument in November and addressing for the Court the very significant issues raised by the appeal,” Eastman said in a statement reported by the Daily Pennsylvanian. How exactly does this work? Disbarred lawyers can’t get pro hac vice admission. Eastman was admitted in California and D.C. and is no longer eligible to practice in either (his license is suspended in D.C.).
Wax already has Holtzman Vogel, a functioning Republican law firm that has carried this litigation from the beginning. Eastman doesn’t bring legal firepower as much as create a performative sideshow. But, of course, that’s kind of the point. The reason these people rail against “cancel culture” is because they see themselves as the stars of their own personal drama. Bringing in Eastman just adds a big name guest star in time for the Emmy season in their own minds.
Maybe he thinks he can enter an appearance if Mike Pence has the courage.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.